Bricklaying and repointing in Holton Heath
Repointing, cracked brickwork, brick replacement and new walls around Holton Heath and Sandford. We tell you what needs doing now and what can wait.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Cracked brickwork in Holton Heath is usually the ground moving with the seasons rather than subsidence, and that covers most of what we get called to. It still wants repairing properly, but it is a repointing job with a bit of patience, not an insurance claim and a new wall.
A lot of the houses here went up in the eighties, and they are all reaching the same stage at roughly the same time. So the calls come in three shapes. A hairline crack stepping down from the corner of a window that somebody has just noticed and cannot stop looking at. Mortar joints on the exposed elevation that have weathered back until you can see the edge of every brick.
Or a low front wall along the pavement that is leaning, shedding its coping, and starting to look like somebody else's problem when a child sits on it. We come out, look properly, and tell you which of those needs doing now and which wants watching for a season first. The price goes in writing either way.
The work
The brickwork we are called to in Holton Heath
Repointing eighties estate brickwork. More than a third of the housing here went up between 1983 and 2008, and houses of that period are cavity walls in machine made facing brick with a fairly thin, fairly weak joint. Thirty odd winters on the exposed elevation is enough to weather it back. The tell is when the arris of every brick stands proud and the joint has gone sandy enough to scrape with a screwdriver. Raked out to roughly twice the joint width and repointed to the profile already there, normally a bucket handle, sometimes a weather struck one on the wall that takes the rain.
Integral garages and picture windows both mean a long concrete lintel with a course or two of brickwork sitting on it. When the lintel deflects, or the steel inside it corrodes and expands, the joints above crack in a straight horizontal line. The brickwork over comes out, the lintel and its bearing get checked, and it goes back. That needs the wall over it supported first, which is why it is a different job from pointing.
Estate frontages here are full of low walls, planters, bin store walls and gate piers, most built in a single skin off a shallow footing with no damp proof course. They wick water out of the ground, the base courses blow, and then the coping lifts and the run leans. This ground shrinks and swells, so where the rainwater ends up beside that footing matters. Rebuilt properly it goes on a foundation dug to firm ground, in stretcher bond with a dpc, piers where the run needs stiffening, and a coping bedded to throw water clear. Matching an eighties facing brick is genuinely hard, so we take a sample off the wall and source against it.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from the first visit to the last, one person to ring, and the quote itemised: access, raking out, the mortar mix, the area of each elevation, brick replacement and disposal on separate lines. Repointing in the same materials is repair, so there is nothing to apply for. Forming a new opening, widening one or taking out anything load bearing is building control work, because the lintel and its bearings have to be signed off. Holton Heath has no conservation area of its own and only five listed entries, where listed building consent from Dorset Council would be needed before a joint is raked. If the wall is shared with next door, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 sets out the notice you have to give.
Cost
What decides the price of a brickwork job
No rate per square metre: the metre of wall tells you nothing until you see the joints. A detached house with an integral garage, a bungalow you can walk a tower around and a low front wall on the pavement all differ. How long the platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is a priced line. Raking by hand is slow, so joint depth and spalled faces decide the hours, and matching a mortar or sourcing a brick takes trial panels. Ask how deep joints are raked, by hand or disc, and whether the scaffold is in.
If something has moved
Loose brickwork, or a wall that has shifted
Ring rather than use the form. Anything overhead or leaning goes to the front of the queue. It is under nine miles out to Holton Heath, so a leaning front wall beside a pavement or loose brickwork over a door normally gets looked at the same day or the next. The first visit is about making it safe. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
How to tell a seasonal crack from one worth worrying about
The ground under Holton Heath is cohesive, which means it shrinks as it dries through the summer and swells again over a wet winter. Foundations from the eighties are not deep, so the whole house rides that movement very slightly, and the brickwork shows it as cracking. Most of what we are shown is exactly that.
The signs are consistent: the crack is fine, it steps down through the mortar joints rather than through the middle of bricks, it is usually near a corner or the reveal of an opening, it is wider at the top than the bottom, and it is at its worst at the end of a dry summer.
The useful thing you can do costs nothing. Mark each end of the crack in pencil, measure across it at the widest point, and look again after a wet winter. If it has closed up, it is seasonal, and it is worth raking out and pointing once, in a mortar deliberately weaker than the brick so the joint keeps taking the movement instead of the brick faces.
If it has kept opening, if it runs through bricks rather than around them, or if doors and windows have started binding on that side of the house, then you want a structural engineer to look before any bricklayer quotes you. We would rather tell you that and lose the job than point a crack that comes back.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Holton Heath, Sandford, Organford, Lytchett Minster, Upton and Wareham, BH16 and BH20. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Holton Heath questions we get asked
Our house went up in the 1980s. Can bricks be matched?
Usually, and more easily than on a Victorian wall. 36.4% of Holton Heath stock dates from 1983 to 2008 with the peak in the 1980s, and facing bricks of that period are mostly still made or have a close current equivalent. We lift a brick from a spot nobody sees, match it on size, texture and colour range rather than a single flat colour, and lay a small trial panel for you to look at both wet and dry before the main run goes in.
Do the Poole Harbour nutrient rules reach Holton Heath?
Only where the scheme creates somewhere to sleep. Holton Heath drains into the Poole Harbour catchment and those rules engage on new overnight accommodation, which is why a loft conversion with a bedroom is caught and a rebuilt garage wall is not. Repointing, a new boundary wall and structural brick repairs stand outside it. If a bedroom is part of the plan, settle it with Dorset Council before the bricklaying is booked, because it can change the scheme.
What causes the crack above our garage door?
Nine times in ten it is the lintel over the opening rather than the building shifting. A garage head is wide, lightly loaded and often has a mild steel lintel with brickwork sat straight on it, so as that steel corrodes it lifts the courses above and the crack runs along the joint. On the naturally wet ground at Holton Heath we also check the fall away from the slab, because water standing at that corner speeds the whole thing up.
Is the tower or scaffold part of the written quote?
It is there as its own line so you can see it against the brickwork. Bungalows are 28.0% of Holton Heath dwellings and a good deal of work here is on single storey or low two storey elevations, which a tower reaches without a full scaffold. Where an elevation genuinely needs a platform we price that separately rather than folding it in. Thomas Hannen measures for access at the survey instead of adding it once work has started.
Which elevation would you do first on our bungalow?
The south west one. That is the exposed face at Holton Heath and it takes the driven rain, so its joints are always further gone than the rest of the building while the sheltered walls often have several winters left in them. Doing the weather side alone is proper repair, not half a job. The quote states plainly which elevations are priced and which are left out, so nothing is assumed on either side.
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Get a price for your brickwork in Holton Heath
Tell us the address and where the crack or the bad pointing is. We will come out and put an itemised price in writing. Free site visit, no obligation.